To Fray Francisco Atanasio Domínguez, who conceded the majesty of the natural surroundings, New Mexico's adobe capital was "a rough stone set in fine metal." When Zebulon Montgomery Pike saw Santa Fe from a distance in 1807 it struck him "with the same effect as a fleet of the flat bottomed boats, which are seen in the spring and fall seasons, descending the Ohio river." George Ruxton was less kind: "The appearance of the town defies description, and I can compare it to nothing but a dilapidated brick-kiln or a prairie-dog town." Poor "miserable mud-built Santa Fé"—your sight "is by no means prepossessing," your houses but "heaps of unburnt bricks" that remind us "irresistibly of an assemblage of mole hills." [1]

Yet very late in the nineteenth century—while life elsewhere marched faster and faster to the cadence of factory whistle and sewing machine—exotic, timeworn Santa Fe cast her spell of "sun, silence, and adobe" over artists and romantics and thoroughly seduced them. Where few beholders had seen any beauty at all, they discovered a City Different.

In 1776 Santa Fe was the only community in New Mexico offering a choice of churches. It had three—San Francisco, which served as the parish church, or parroquia; Nuestra Señora de la Luz, called fondly but not properly the military chapel, or la castrense; and, across the little Rio de Santa Fe to the south, San Miguel, the oldest in town.

San Francisco, La Parroquia
Nuestra Señora de la Luz, La Castrense
San Miguel

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